Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have a few questions for the Minister. I concur with what much of what Deputy Griffin said. I take the Minister's point that it is difficult and she has to maintain an arm's length approach but I would like to make her aware of the fact that I have met with staff too. I have heard extremely worrying and harrowing personal stories from staff, many of whom are women and who have worked there for more than 20, 30 and 40 years.

These are women who are still in that organisation coming to retirement age who will have no pension; women who have worked in that organisation for 30 years and are now retired with no pension; women who have worked in that organisation for decades with no maternity leave, no sick leave, none of the benefits that they should have been entitled to, that we automatically assume they would be entitled to, having worked in RTÉ. To extrapolate a little further, the Minister said that she is engaging with the unions and they are giving her a sense of where staff are at, and the most appropriate way to proceed on the reports she has commissioned and the work NewERA is doing. I want to tease that out a little bit further. Is NewERAgoing to be in a position to find that absolute figure before the Minister makes any commitment to RTÉ on its funding into the future? The question is what will the implications be. My information is that these could impact almost 700 staff. That is a huge cohort of the entire staff of RTÉ. Given that 700 staff might have to be compensated for their years of work, the maternity leave they missed out on, the sick leave they missed out on, for the Department's sake it would be hugely important that it be fully informed as to what that bottom line is going to be. Having spoken with the staff, I am very concerned about the real figure in terms of what RTÉ needs to continue, and what it will owe to those 700 staff. Would the Minister like to comment on that view?